Ecology

Special Abilities

Creeping Cover (Ex) A roofgarden can unfurl a large, dense carpet of cysts, thorns, and vines in a 40-foot radius as a full-round action. As a move action, the roofgarden can disappear from its current location and reappear at any point within this area; this movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity. The area within a roofgarden’s creeping cover is treated as if affected by an entangle spell (Reflex DC 17). The roofgarden can retract its creeping cover as a full-round action, but while the cover is deployed, the plant cannot move beyond its area of effect. While this lush carpet is a part of the roofgarden’s body, attacking the creeping cover deals no damage to the roofgarden.

Volatile Pods (Ex) The roofgarden’s fruits store alchemically potent fluids that explode when jostled or struck. The plant can launch 1 or 2 pods up to 50 feet each round as ranged touch attacks. A pod explodes on contact, inflicting 4d6 points of fire damage in a 10-foot-radius burst. A roofgarden contains a number of pods equal to its Hit Dice (typically 10), and ejected pods regrow in 24 hours.

Originally native to the Verduran Forest, where they laze about in the canopy to snare birds and small game, roofgardens are largely sedentary predatory plants whose bodies generate volatile oils that both render them resistant to heat and allow them to start the raging infernos required to cast their seeds into the wind. Vigorous logging efforts in their primordial homeland have spread roofgardens to several Taldan cities. Roofgardens have since come to thrive on the broad, unobstructed, elevated surfaces of their namesake, providing the territorial plants with plenty of birds, sunlight, water, and even human victims.

Roofgardens derive their names from the large mass of vines and moss they spread over the area around them to collect sunlight. The plants are gluttons for both warmth and water, and they consequently find most environments north or south of Taldor inhospitable, though the potential exists for them to spread along the coasts of the Inner Sea, driving increased scrutiny of Taldan lumber for the tiny seeds it might conceal.